On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
Starlink Ground Station Map
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Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#22Wow. For a service that should have global reach, these are mostly in the US! I'm a lot more excited about LEO broadband compared to 5G. Sounds like a career change worth pursuing, even if you are halfway around the world.
Likely it's easier for a US based company to get licensed and find sites to lease in the US. Also, better to get experience with equirment before going global.
Or, maybe it's just better transparency/goverment data on teleports from the US.
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#23On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
I wondered this too, but came to the realization that it will be like any other ISP, and comply with any/all local laws it has to comply with to get the revenue that it is ultimately a company's job to get.
Most companies don't engage in activism/disobedience at the expense of revenue. Apple censors the App Store and backdoors iCloud for the CCP (via state-operated servers) to operate in mainland China, for example.
The ground stations will have to be fairly close to the customers for a while, and the customer antennas aren't particularly covert.
It will probably have all manner of government-mandated filtering like any other established commercial ISP. After all, it's nothing without its ground stations right now.
EDIT: It was HN that changed my view on this, in some of the comments in the HN thread on my Starlink blog post. I started out hopeful and idealistic about Starlink being an anti-censorship technology.
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#24On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
I am sure it is going to be prohibited to use it over there. I feel like I already read somewhere that government in Russia is concern about it.
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#25On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
"Russia may fine citizens for using SpaceX's Starlink internet. Here's how the internet service poses a threat to authoritarian regimes."
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-may-fine-citizens-spa...
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#26On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
For other sat phones and sat internet, if a country makes it illegal, the sat carriers don't provide service when you're in that country.
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#27On a tangent, I wonder what effects Starlink will have in countries where the government wants to control or filter/restrict people's internet access?
There are already a handful of countries that restrict the import of things like sat phones, CB radios, etc.
The Starlink dish will just be on that same list of prohibited goods, and Customs will stop them coming into the country.
(I was warned NOT to take a sat phone on my trek all the way around Africa - governments of countries like Rep. Congo, Sudan, Nigeria and a few others don't like civilians (especially foreigners) having that tech)
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#28Does anyone have an image of what one of these ground stations looks like? Do they piggyback on some existing antenna shack? Or did they build their own from scratch? I also wonder whether they considered partnering with AWS Ground Station? https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ Or maybe the Starlink constellation's requirements are not amenable to that?
Amazon is also planning an LEO internet constellation; being dependent upon a direct competitor for core infrastructure probably isn't a good idea, especially when that specific competitor (Amazon) has been busted before abusing its position as vendor to appropriate their customers' private information and enter their markets directly as participant. If you are going to compete with Amazon, don't use AWS to do it. I…
Ah, that is a good point, of course.
What kind of ground station density does Starlink need in its eventual state?
Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#29Re: Starlink Ground Station Map
#30Does anyone have an image of what one of these ground stations looks like? Do they piggyback on some existing antenna shack? Or did they build their own from scratch? I also wonder whether they considered partnering with AWS Ground Station? https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ Or maybe the Starlink constellation's requirements are not amenable to that?
There are photos here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/m8maa9/wise_nc_st...
Across all the photos I've seen it looks pretty consistent, they build a fence and mount the antennas on small pads. It doesn't look like Starlink is building their own shelters (the ones in those photos are the carrier's). The carriers will readily offer rack space in their shelters for the right price but this does tend to suggest that the antennas are pretty self-contained and don't require a lot of external support equipment.